FEELING IN BRITAIN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18066, 18 April 1933, Page 5

FEELING IN BRITAIN

THE COMMONS DEBATE SIR J. SIMON’S SPEECH INDICTMENT OF SOVIET LONDON, April 12. The intensity of the feeling aroused i:i Great Britain bv the arrests in Russia of British engineers on charges of espionage and sabotage and by their subsequent treatment was reflected by packed benches in the House of Commons to-day. During the debate on the bill, which empowers the Government to regulate and, if need be, prohibit imports from Russia, the Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, made a brilliant and outspoken indictment of the actions of the Russian Secret Police. He said the alleged “ confessions ” are rubbish. A statement which shocked the House was about the shooting without trial of 35 Russian officials, accused of agricultural sabotage, iu the same prison in which some of the arrested British engineers had been lodged. Applause drowned many of Sir John .-Union’s statements. Even Socialist oemlii rs cotifessml that many points in the British case were unanswerable. Nobody was more loudly cheered than .Ur David Kirkwood, the extreme “left-winger” from Dumbarton, who criticised people who apologised for their own country. He acclaimed the genius of Scottish engineers when he related his own “heart-breaking” experiences in manufacturing turbines. On one occasion, these had been stripped through overlooking the removal of a spanner, and he suggested that what the Soviet insisted was sabotage was accidental.

Sir John Simon pleaded the Government’s case brilliantly, less as a politician than as a renowned lawyer. His outspokenness has rarely been equalled in dealing with foreign affairs. lie traversed and threw fresh fight upon the correspondence between the Government and the British Ambassador to Russia, Sir Esmond Ovey, which was published in the form of a Government White Paper yesterday. PRAISED BY RUSSIANS Sir John Simon, moving the second reading, said that notice to terminate the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement expires on April 17. The Government desired to negotiate a new trading igroement. and negotiations were pro■eeding when the very disturbing event occurred which was the subject jf yesterday’s White Paper. Russia, he said, had bought power plant from the Mctropolitan-Vickcrs Company extensively for the last 10 years. It had received the highest praise from Soviet engineers, and. under technical assistance arrangements. of which the current one had five years to run, the company had supplied some of its best arid most • kilful men for the purpose of installing, starting, and running the plant. It had some bearing on the matter that the company’s experts might, therefore, expect to remain in Russia for another live years.

No complaint was alleged as to the operation of the agreement, and six months ago the Soviet placed an order for turbo-generator equipment to work at tho highest combined temperature and pressure yet attempted in the world. IN SAME GAOL On the night of March 11, the Hussion O.G.P.U. searched the house where some of the engineers were liv mg, and arrested Mr Monkhouse and Mr Thornton. They were removed at 2 o’clock in the morning to prison. Next morning Mr Cushny and Mr MacDonald were similarly taken off to gaol. Nobody disputed the sovereign authority of any foreign Government but he was entitled to call attention to the circumstances immediately ne companying the arrests. At the same time, the O.G.P.U. police in the same prison not merely sentenced 35 ltus shins to death, but carried out the sentence there and then, without, sr far as was known, any trial, and certainly without putting into motion nnj ordinary judicial proceedings. “When the Foreign Office received a telegram that .a certain number of British engineers were in the hands of the 0.G.P.U., and another telegram stating that the O.G.P.U. had shot B.> people without trial, I thought I was entitled to ”

Here cheers prevented Sir John Simon from completing his sentence. Three or four davs before the shoot-

•r of the 35 Russians, Sir John Simon went on. the Soviet press stated that 45 Russians had been arrested for the crime of agricultural sabotage, lfe said, amid laughter, that deliberate propagation of weeds in fields and the lowering of crop yields was one of the charges. The British Government had not the slightest desire to sever friendly relations with Russia; but let there be no mistake—there was no proper basis for really friendly relations if the story presented in the White Paper represented the way in which men who went to that country were treat--1 flo knew of no way in which ho could secure for these men a fair trial, but one thing they could do was to convince the Russian .authorities oi the anxiety felt here.